Title

Author

Keywords

cohabiting couples, abuse, interpersonal relationships

Abstract

This study investigated the influence of past witnessed or experienced abuse on heterosexual cohabiting couples' Premarital Personal and Relationship Evaluation for Cohabiting Couples (PREPARE-CC) couple relationship types. The researcher utilized preexisting data from 5,000 cohabiting couples who had previously participated in the PREPARE marriage preparation program and had completed the PREPARE-CC inventory including a demographic section that elicited information about past abuse. Discriminant analysis was conducted in SPSS to answer the question of whether the presence of past witnessed or experienced abuse could successfully predict relationship type among cohabiting couples. Results of the discriminant analysis yielded no significant ability to classify cohabiting couples by individuals' experience of past abuse, however, isolating females and males with the highest frequencies of past abuse indicated that males abused "very often" had a higher frequency of higher-satisfaction relationship types than the general sample consisting mostly of individuals with little or no history of abuse. Females reporting abuse "very often" did not follow this same pattern. Recommendations were made for future longitudinal studies and for strength-based research on healthy heterosexual cohabiting couples in an effort to understand what contributes to these couples' success.

Notes

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